To add to what others have pointed out, there’s also the fact that American unity is precarious. Most young Americans don’t really feel much sympathy for the institutional framework of the US, don’t have any incentive to maintain it, and lack any kind of unified social or cultural framework to form an attachment with. The problem with implementing something like Totalförsvar in the US is the fact that most Americans don’t actually like or want to protect their fellow Americans in this era. Why would young people want to participate in a civil or military defence schema to defend a paper-country that doesn’t benefit them in any coherent way? People absolutely will serve to protect their own clan or tribe, but the idea of sacrificing for the sake of “Those People” (for whatever flavour of “Those People” that individual resents the most) would create such a spectacular backlash any such proposal would be dead on arrival without some kind of massive financial incentive.

National Service schemes only work in the context of effective social welfare systems, and there’s nothing the US hates more than the idea of effective social welfare systems. Desperation is an essential part of their economy, as very few of their current crop of corporate “leaders” would be able to employ anyone at all if the alternative weren’t starving in the street.

Culturally, no.

The US cannot do anything that involves team work or selflessness

A few things to talk about first in regards to the US:

• We have the concept of the National Guard, which is a military reserve force under the control of the States but with the ability for the President to call it to active duty. While still a military force, state governors will mobilize them for things where the local police force needs help, like natural disasters, so it is possible to deploy them on missions that are closer to Civil Defense actions.

• We also do have a bunch of agencies that collectively make up something like a Civil Defense Force, but since the Bush administration those agencies have largely been sucked into the Department of Homeland Security, and even the concept of “civil defense” has been eaten by the idea of “Homeland Security” (which is a bit different, don’t you think?) The one exception is emergency preparedness/ FEMA, which is still a priority in most people’s minds despite our President treating everything he touches like his own personal piggy bank.

Now, in relation to your idea about a “draft” for civil defense purposes, we call the idea National Service and we have many such agencies, like Americorps. However, the idea of mandatory national service will never happen until Americans as a whole become less selfish. And even if it does, I am confident those who are well-off will find a way to buy out of it, which will defeat the whole purpose, won’t it?

Border defense for the USA would be increasing the number of customs agents along the Mexican border by a significant number. The USA has never had a Russia like threat in its border who could invade at any time.

The National Guard mainly handles civil defense now, but there were more civilian oriented groups during World War II and the early Cold War. It is mainly volunteer and acts as dual use to support the US Army in times of war. I got my first COVID vaccinations at a National Guard run facility.

To answer your question of if mandatory civil service would help the USA, you would first need to build the institutions needed to use the manpower. There really isn’t a use case on the civil side that could use millions of young people who may not have the drive or the knowledge base to do more than basic grunt work.

I believe there’s an important distinction to be made between drafting, which relates to how the needs for manpower are met, and doctrine, which stipulates how that manpower is used.

There’s nothing to say the US couldn’t (or doesn’t) have a similar doctrine since totalförsvar at its core relates to keeping society functioning during wartime and for most civilians means a legal obligation to just keep going to work as usual. If need should arise there’s nothing to say that additional civilians wouldn’t be drafted into the armed forces since everyone between 16 and 70 years has an obligation to contribute to the defense of the country according to the current needs.

That said, military doctrine differs severely between the countries; whereas Swedish doctrine has been focused more on defense and parted from the possibility of allied intervention, the US has a doctrine focused on projection of power and pre-emptive strikes (or overtly meddling in international affairs if you will). Accordingly, the needs and underlying structures of the military differ as well, including practices for drafting and training of personnel. As long as the US can’t conceive of war arriving at their own doorstep, and believe themselves to nip every threat by the bud, they won’t see any need to pivot to a defensive doctrine, and doing so anyway without any apparent need would only project weakness.

In the US everyone supports the troops until it is time to actually support the troops.

As long as supporting the troops is a bumpersticker or a right wing talking point the US is all for it. When it comes to actually serving or supporting. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

So to answer your question, no.

Not discussing Vietnam including both Iraq & Afghanistan,

But you already opened that can

I’m relying a lot on the background of Sweden from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CsSs0eQKKA

In essence, the USA does not have the same pressures that led Sweden to their current strategy. For that reason alone, duplicating the same strategy in the USA would be a failure to meet the country’s actual threats, use up more cultural and military capital, while also throwing away some of the USA’s natural strengths (eg stable geopolitics in North America, service exports economy, vastly distributed population).

As a reminder, only until fairly recently, the USA military branches met most of their recruitment goals through voluntary enlistment, an approach that succeeded against the backdrop of 1975, when the country was deeply against the draft. What fuels the enlistment pipeline is, rather unfortunately, the poorer class, because military service is a route to a better life. In some ways, the voluntary enlistment benefits are a perverse form of state support.

So the need for a draft is, IMO, wholly inappropriate if voluntary enlistment is still viable. The next question would be whether the USA would find itself overwhelmed by crisis or disaster that it would need the civilian population to help defend the national interest.

And still, I don’t see as being plausibly, because it really shouldn’t ever get to this point: the USA still has (we think) credible nuclear deterrence and power projection. This can, and does, make up for the lack of civil cohesion and, quite frankly, civil apathy for anything beyond putting food on the table. That is to say, a threat would have to seriously infringe on the average American’s daily life before they will do something about it.

If this were seriously part of the national defense, then we’d have already lost the game.